Sir John Kay; Lord Justic of Appeal
Hyfler/Rosner
(Filed: 07/07/2004) Telegraph
Sir John Kay, the Lord Justice of Appeal who died on Friday
aged 60, brought his formidable intellect and common sense
to bear in causes celebres such as the appeals of Jeremy
Bamber and Sally Clark and the posthumous appeal of Ruth
Ellis; he was to have presided at the appeal now being heard
of Sion Jenkins, convicted of murdering his foster daughter
Billie-Jo.
As a Silk specialising in criminal cases, Kay had been one
of the most powerful and compelling advocates on the
Northern Circuit. He was a master of detail and his
unhesitating courtroom style was well nigh irresistible.
Clients were always grateful to have him on their side. On
the bench he was firm and never one to let bad points go by,
yet he was intellectually entirely fair.
In addition to his cases, Kay's name had recently appeared
in the Press with almost equal frequency in connection with
his son Ben, who played as a second-row forward in the
England rugby team that won the World Cup in Australia in
2003.
Formerly a keen rugby player himself and later an avid
follower of the game, Kay had been president of Waterloo
Rugby Football Club and ran the club's junior sides at the
time that his son was coming through. He and Lady Kay
travelled to Australia to watch all of England's games from
the quarter-final stage through to the final.
John William Kay was born on September 13 1943 and grew up
at Blundellsands on the outskirts of Liverpool, where his
father imported timber. John was educated at Denstone and at
Christ's, Cambridge, where he read Mathematics before
switching to Law eight months before his finals, in which he
took a First.
He read for the Bar while teaching at a prep school in
Hertfordshire and was called by Gray's Inn in 1968. He was
subsequently a Tutor in Law at Liverpool University for a
year while starting out as a general common law barrister on
the Northern Circuit, based at chambers in Liverpool.
Kay was appointed a Recorder in 1982, took Silk in 1984, and
was approved to sit as a deputy High Court judge in 1989. He
was appointed to the High Court bench in 1992, assigned to
the Queen's Bench Division, and was Presiding Judge on the
Northern Circuit from 1994 to 1997 before being promoted to
the Court of Appeal in 2000.
In December 2002, Kay sat with Mr Justice Wright and Mr
Justice Henriques at the appeal of Jeremy Bamber, who had
been convicted in 1986 of murdering five members of his
adoptive family at their farmhouse in Essex.
Described by the judge at his trial as "evil almost beyond
belief", Bamber argued there were 15 grounds for appealing
against his conviction, including new scientific evidence.
But Kay and his fellow judges threw out each of these in a
522-point judgment. "We do not doubt the safety of the
verdicts," they said, "and we have recorded in our judgment
the fact that the more we examined the detail of the case
the more likely we thought it to be that the jury were
right."
The case was attended by inevitable publicity, not least on
the internet, where Bamber continued to protest his
innocence on his own website, maintaining, as he always had
done, that his schizophrenic sister Sheila Caffell had
killed the family before committing suicide. But her
innocence - and Bamber's guilt - was proven when her blood
was found inside a gun silencer which had been discovered
subsequently in a gun cupboard at the farmhouse.
A month after the Bamber case, Kay was again in the
spotlight presiding at the second appeal of Sally Clark, the
solicitor convicted of murdering her two baby sons. She
appealed now on the ground that a Home Office pathologist
had failed to disclose information that suggested that the
second son might have died from a bacterial infection.
Granting her appeal, Kay said that: "If this had been heard,
the trial would undoubtedly have taken a different course.
It would have a formed a central part of the defence." Kay
was also scathing about Sir Roy Meadows' estimate that the
chances of two cot deaths in one family were "73 million to
one"; he called it a "grossly misleading" figure, adding
that "it should never have been put forward at all. Its
potential effect when it was manifestly wrong was, I think,
huge."
In 2003, shortly before he left for Australia to watch his
son play rugby, Kay presided at the posthumous appeal
against the murder conviction of Ruth Ellis, the last woman
to have been hanged in Britain.
Although he found it "astonishing" that her original trial
in 1955 had lasted for just one day, Kay said that "under
the law at the date of the trial, the judge was right to
withdraw the defence of provocation from the jury" and that
therefore the appeal must fail.
He pointed out that Ruth Ellis had "consciously and
deliberately chosen not to appeal at the time", and that,
unlike the case of James Hanratty, no one disputed that she
was the killer (of David Blakely, the racing driver with
whom she was having an affair).
Kay then made a general criticism of posthumous appeal cases
for wasting court time. "If we had not been obliged to
consider her [Ruth Ellis's] case, we would perhaps in the
time available have dealt with eight to 12 other cases, the
majority of which would have involved people who were said
to be wrongly in custody."
"Parliament," he said, "may wish to consider whether going
back many years into history to re-examine a case of this
kind is a use that ought to be made of the limited resources
available."
Kay was at various times chairman of the Criminal Committee
of the Judicial Studies Board, the National Criminal Justice
Board, the Criminal Justice Council and the Criminal Justice
Consultative Council.
In private, he was kind and approachable, always ready with
advice, and a loving family man. Besides rugby, he enjoyed
horse racing and genealogy.
He is survived by his wife, Jeffa (née Connell), whom he
married in 1966, and by their son and two daughters.
Hyfler/Rosner
Michael Rhodes
Hyfler/Rosner wrote:
> Sir John Kay
> (Filed: 07/07/2004) Telegraph
>
>
> Sir John Kay, the Lord Justice of Appeal who died on Friday
> aged 60, brought his formidable intellect and common sense
> to bear in causes celebres such as the appeals of Jeremy
> Bamber and Sally Clark and the posthumous appeal of Ruth
> Ellis; he was to have presided at the appeal now being heard
> of Sion Jenkins, convicted of murdering his foster daughter
> Billie-Jo.
<Memorial service>
<Sir John Kay>
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs
attended a service of thanksgiving at a service of thanksgiving for the
life and work of Sir John Kay, a Lord Justice of Appeal, held on
Thursday 21 Oct, 2004 at the Church of St Alban the Martyr, Holborn.
The Rev Roger Holloway, Preacher to the Honourable Society of Gray's
Inn, officiated, assisted by Canon Eric James. Lord Justice Potter,
Treasurer of Gray's Inn, read the lesson. Mrs Amanda Yip, daughter,
read from the works of R L Stevenson, Miss Tiffany Kay, daughter, read
from the works of Davis Harkin and Mr Ben Kay, son, read The Journey of
Life by Winston S Churchill. Mr Timothy Holroyde, QC, gave an address.
The Lord Chief Justice was represented by Lord Justice Judge.
Among others present were:
Lady Kay (widow), Mr D Yip (son-in-law), Mrs Ben Kay (daughter-in-
law), Mr and Mrs C J Kay (brother and sister-in-law), Mr and Mrs R G
Jones (brother-in-law and sister), Mrs Pauline Connell (sister-in-
law), Miss Louise Gay. Lord Hooson, QC, Lord Justice Pill, Lord Justice
Ward, Lord Justice Mummery, Lord Justice Kennedy, Lord Justice and Lady
Ross, Lady Thomas, Sir Murray Stuart-Smith, Sir John and Lady Owen, Sir
Philip Otton, Lady Thomas, Sir Charles and Lady Mantell, Mr Justice
Colman, Mr Justice Johnson, Mr Justice Richards, Mr Justice Silber, Mr
Justice Mitting, Mrs Justice Rafferty, Mr Justice Crane, Mr Justice
Grigson, Mr Justice Ouseley, Mr Justice Ryder, Lady Brown, Sir Michael
Harrison. Master Roger Venne, Master David Gladwell, Judge Anthony
Morris, QC, Judge Stephen Kramer, QC, and Mrs Kramer, Judge Christopher
Moss, QC, Judge Richard Hawkins, QC, Judge Ann Goddard, QC, His Honour
Neil Denison, QC, and Miss Ann Curnow, QC, Mr Anthony Butcher, QC, Mr
David Jeffreys, QC, Mr Michael Harvey, QC, Miss Marion Simmons, QC, Mr
John Leighton Williams, QC, and Mrs Leighton Williams, Mr William
Clegg, QC, Miss Nicola Davies, QC, Mr Peter Hughes, QC Mr Timothy Lamb,
QC, Miss Anesta Weekes, QC, Miss Sasha Wass, QC, Mr Anthony Evans, QC,
Mr Timothy Barnes, QC, Miss Geraldine Andrews, QC, Mrs Linda Dimsdale,
Mrs Audrey Green, Miss Penelope Hewitt, Mr Roger Eastman, Major-General
David Jenkins (under-treasurer, of Gray's Inn) with many other
friends and colleagues.
END
--